Jingoism triumphs at NBC

Published 12:27 am, Sunday, August 12, 2012

The Olympics are built on a contradiction. A festival of global community and a celebration of national identity, they are both idealistically international and pragmatically national.

The founder of the modern Olympic games, the French aristocrat Pierre de Coubertin, adumbrated his humanist philosophy of sport, what he called Olympism, with its emphasis on peace, mutual understanding, and global harmony, while organizing the games around the political reality of the nation-state.

Coubertin rationalized this contradiction in his concept of internationalism — which, he argued, should be the state of mind of those who love their country above all, but who seek to draw to it the friendship of others by professing an intelligent and enlightened sympathy for other countries.

NBC's coverage of the London Games, which ended Sunday evening, undermined this promise. For two weeks, the network's broadcasts promoted nationalism over internationalism, American jingoism rather than true cosmopolitanism. American television networks have always tended in this direction; but it was particularly blatant this year, and so destructive of the goal of intercultural awareness and understanding.

NBC's coverage transparently favored U.S. performances — so much so that these Olympic games looked and felt like little more than a tournament of American athletes in London.

If NBC featured an event during prime time, it was safe to assume that the U.S. had won a medal. Often, athletes from other nations, including medalists, were summarily ignored — except in a few, brief marquee events like the women's 100-meter freestyle.

How can we learn about other cultures when we only see them as cannon fodder for an American exclusive?

NBC showed Ryan Seacrest's interview with Michael Phelps while ignoring the moment of silence at the Olympic Stadium for those who died in the 2005 bombings in London. Another opportunity for cultural education missed.

NBC also celebrated the "cult of personality" model so prevalent in our contemporary culture. Witness the inordinate amount of airtime dedicated to Michael Phelps, Missy Franklin, Misty May-Treanor and the Fab Five.

Phelps is not the greatest Olympian of all time. He is only the most successful. The difference is important. Endowing American athletes with Hollywood star appeal —which reminds me: Why do sprinters wear sunglasses all the time? — further enhanced the image of American superiority and detracted from the cultural humility that Olympism promulgates.

The "as-live" broadcast strategy allowed NBC to maximize American jingoism, and did not help us gain sympathy for athletes from other countries.

I, for one, would love to know the story of the women athletes from Saudi Arabia or Qatar, the phenomenal New Zealand crew athletes, or the athletes from a wide variety of countries — from Botswana to Bahamas, Norway to Nigeria — who came with little hope of winning medals.

There are compelling narratives out there that could offer us a real window into the heart and soul of other cultures, but that was not obvious to American viewers.

"As-live" broadcasting enabled NBC to preordain commentary and artificially contrive drama before we saw the event. NBC's biographical sketches were dead giveaways about who was going to be successful or not. The inherent drama in sport was denigrated in favor of a concocted drama that celebrated Americanism.

Of course, patriotic fervor gives the Olympics energy and vitality. As Coubertin recognized, sports can bring into play both the noblest and basest passions; they can develop unselfishness and honor just as much as the love of gain; they can be chivalrous or corrupt, virile or bestial; they can strengthen peace or prepare for war. He simply hoped that we would take the athletic high road. But if Coubertin was an incurable romantic and idealist, couldn't we all be for the fortnight that the Olympic flame burns?

In the end, the games are a testimony not to what we are at our worst — parochial, insular, self-aggrandizing — but to what we can be at our best — cosmopolitan, generous, magnanimous.

NBC pandered to our worst national, not our best international, inclinations. The Olympics were not the celebration of American exceptionalism that NBC would have us believe.